Month: January 2013

FORT RILEY, Kan. — Aviators from the 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, tested a new self-extraction training scenario designed to save lives in the most dire of circumstances during a survival and evasion exercise in mid-November.

“This is a nonstandard event,” Capt. Tony Snipes, commander of Troop C, 1st Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, said. “There is no Army standard, so we are trying to standardize it and execute it as professionally as possible.”

The scenario placed the aviation Soldiers in a simulated hostile environment where they were required to make their way from a “downed” OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter to a designated pickup zone more than a kilometer away. Once at the pickup zone, the stranded aviators were rescued by their fellow Kiowa pilots. Since the Kiowa is such a small aircraft, the rescued Soldiers had to secure themselves to the outside of the aircraft using straps connected to their flight gear.

The self-extraction technique was used in Iraq in 2004 during the rescue of downed OH-58D Kiowa Warrior pilots Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chad Beck and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Greg Crow. It was used again in Iraq in 2007 following the downing of an aircraft piloted by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mark Burrows and Chief Warrant Officer Steven Cianfrini. In both instances, the rescued pilots rode outside of an AH-64 Apache secured by a nylon strap attached to the pilots’ vests.

When a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) or MEUSOC deploys, one mission they have as a “canned” scenario is TRAP, or Tactical Recovery of Aircraft and Personnel. When Scott O’Grady was shot down in the Balkans in 1999, it was the Marines that executed a TRAP mission to recover him.

Such a mission is not commonly practiced by Army units. I have gone through a couple of training scenarios with this in mind, but it wasn’t a core mission, but more an attempt to add a little something to break the monotony.

But as the article notes, using wingmen to self-extract a unit’s personnel has been done under fire. This training is an attempt to discover what works, and what doesn’t, and more importantly, do it before the bullets start flying.

Every now and again, there is a piece written, or an old interview surfaces, that gives lie to the public assurances so generously handed out by the Secular Progressive Socialists to the vast and moderate majority of the American people, and reveals the true agendas and actual belief systems of those who now have their hands on the levers of power in our Great Republic

In the shameful exploitation of the Newtown tragedy, the gun-grabbers once again have come to the fore, led by the same cast of characters that has a decades-long track record of demanding draconian gun control, to include firearms confiscation and eradication of the Second Amendment. This time, we are told, the anti-gun zealots must protect our children. As if the law-abiding were a threat to the lives and safety of any American. In the Presidential debates, President Obama claimed to believe in the Second Amendment, and the right of private gun ownership. His vow for gun control measures, he asserts, is also for the protection of the children, and not because of any aversion to private firearm ownership. Yet, the man he appointed as Attorney General expressed this opinion in 1995:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0f6F_BMsWg]

Isn’t that the same Eric Holder whose illegal activity led to hundreds of taxpayer-purchased weapons being obtained by criminals on both sides of our southern border, with the deaths of nearly 300 Mexicans, a US Border Patrol Agent, and likely a number of Americans? It is indeed. His remarks in the video seem almost reasonable until you remember that the object of his “demonizing”, the guns themselves, have little to do with a society and a youth desensitized to violence, and a criminal element whose disobedience of ever-restrictive gun laws is a foregone guarantee.

Dianne Feinstein, one of the authors of the 1994 Clinton-era “assault weapons ban”, the one which failed to prevent Columbine, gave a 1995 interview in which she told the interviewer her REAL goals, which she laments not having achieved.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blXkl9YVoHo]

Both Eric Holder and Dianne Feinstein have sworn to uphold the Constitution, as has President Obama. Yet all three see our Constitution as an obstacle to their political and social ambitions. Obama, also, put words to his true beliefs in this 2001 Chicago radio interview, when he was a State Senator. Listen carefully. He tells us where he thinks the Constitution fails, and what he intends to do. Wealth redistribution, and a Federal and State government that MUST do for people:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMJS4CP3OC0]

State Senator Obama displays flagrant and contemptuous disregard for our Constitution, and our rights under that Constitution. Does this seem to be a radical, thinly held viewpoint? Not nearly as much as we are led to believe by the abject silence of the mainstream media on such revelations. Not coincidentally, a Georgetown professor wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times over the weekend. Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.

…a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries, knew nothing of our present situation, acted illegally under existing law and thought it was fine to own slaves might have disagreed with this course of action.

Perhaps Professor Seidman should be jailed for his opinions? Perhaps his family, too. He doesn’t need a trial, and doesn’t even need to be present to hear the guilty verdict or the pronouncement of sentence. After all, the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers, and the right to free expression, or keeping and bearing arms against the tyranny of government, those were the ideas of white propertied slave-owners, not of secular socialist-communists.

Do not think that the above ideas from Obama, Holder, Feinstein, and Seidman are in any way uncommon to the far-left progressives. Those beliefs are the very core of the far-left. Each couches their ideas in what seems to be a reasonable argument for increasing government authority and limiting personal freedom. They are not the first, of course.

The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures…

The track record of governmental self-restraint when there is none provided by legal limitations on power, enforced by the prospect of disapproval from an armed populace, is more than a little dismal.

When you hear the far-left politicians, abetted by a subservient and beholden press, repeatedly assert that there is no desire for gun confiscation, or for forcible wealth redistribution, and that Constitutional liberties of the People and limitations to the authority of Government remain sacrosanct, remember that you have been told otherwise. Not by me, but by THEM. In their own words. Take heed.